Ready, Set . . . Go

I'm all ready and set, now I just need to wait for the "go" . . . the go of guests that is.

The house is clean, the laundry is done, the fridge is stocked to the brim . . . so now we are just wait for the impending arrival of all our visitors.

As mentioned, tomorrow our friends, the Williams, will be arriving on a house hunting trip. On Monday, Brian's mom and step-dad arrive for a three week visit, bringing the total number of people in the house to 6 adults and 3 kids, for a few days anyway, but whose counting. ;) No doubt it will be busy around here, but we are all looking forward to the various guests and fun activities that will inevitably follow. The Williams have a daughter that is only a year older than Charley, so the kids cannot wait to meet their new friend . . . and the Williams are also Hobie's surrogate parents (they watched Hobie many-at-time for us when we were in Sacramento), so he too is excited for the extra attention. The kids are also beside themselves with excitement for their Grammy and Papa to arrive, which always means lots of extra play buddies and fun stuff for a few weeks. During this visit, Bev and Dick are going to be staying in the beach cabins for a few nights, and at a condo in Waikiki for a week, so that will also be some extra entertainment during their visit. Plus Easter happens somewhere in there, so this should be pretty good few weeks for everyone.

Charley is on spring break this week and next week, so we did manage to squeeze in a beach day on Tuesday. Aside from that, however, we've mostly just been getting ready for our company and tackling some neglected projects around here, like shampooing all the carpets/rugs/furniture, mopping every square inch of floor, weeding the yard and trimming bushes, etc. Potty training is going even better than I had hoped with Zander . . . I was only concerned with daytime training, sticking with pull-ups at night, but much to my surprise, Zander has woken me up the past two nights to tell me that he has to go to the bathroom. Hopefully this is a trend and not just a fluke. And besides, he's been waking me up several times a night for the past couple weeks anyway, so if he's going to torture me with that, at least he has a good excuse. We still have our accidents once in awhile, especially when he is distracted and busy playing with friends, but we are getting there. My diaper days are quickly coming to an end!

Brian is busier than ever at work, as he is currently acting as the head Operations Officer for the next few months, which means that all helicopter and C-130 missions go through him. As a result, this also means that he is on-call 24/7, so his phone may (and does) ring all hours of the night and day. As if that doesn't keep him busy enough, he is also taking a programming class as he works toward his Masters in Information Technology, and for someone with no programming experience what-so-ever, the class is time-consuming and requires a lot of his attention. So, Brian's life is pretty crazy right now, but thankfully it is all temporary . . . if the next four or five months count as temporary anyway.

That's about it at Casa de Palm . . . for now, anyway.